August 5, 2004

According to Brad, it's a beautiful day upstairs.

It is 3 P.M. on an August day at the coffeehouse La Strada, at the corner of Bancroft and College. The sun is shining. The espresso machines are humming--Italian technology being operated by Spanish-speaking immigrant workers processing water from the Sierra Nevadas, milk from Marin County, and a ground-up roasted bean originally from Ethiopia now grown in Central America under shade canopies by small farmers interested in sustainable agriculture. It is a beautiful day.

The overhead heat lamps are on.

I repeat that: the overhead heat lamps are on to take the chill out of the air, so that we can comfortably sit in the sun, sip our coffee, and discuss the Great Intellectual Issues.

"Paradise" is derived from the Old Persian word for the wall around an enclosed, irrigated garden. Xenophon mistook the word for the enclosing wall for the word for the garden-park itself, and here we are. In some ways all of Greater San Francisco is a paradise: the sea-breeze off the cold Alaska current to keep us cool when it threatens to get hot, heat lamps to warm us outside when it threatens to get cool, lots and lots of water from the Sierra Nevadas to irrigate and let us grow green things during the nine months of the year when it rarely rains (and the five months of the year when it never rains).

If only I didn't have this sneaking feeling that there is something unnatural about having to turn on the heat lamps in the middle of the day in August. It has been a relatively cool summer.

To his "if only" I will add mine: If only the lab weren't in the basement...
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Comments

You bastard, it's 111 degrees in Houston...I don't even think we use heat lamps in January...